Out of Place (Third Sunday of Advent)

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Today’s first reading from Isaiah is a beautiful image of God’s restoration of a broken and hurting people.  Be strong!  Do not fear!  God is coming to help you!  You will be restored personally – the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  And you will be restored collectively – there’s even going to be a highway in the midst of the desert for you to return home to Zion.

It’s so beautiful and poetic that even people who have never read any of Isaiah may be familiar with this chapter, because Handel based part of his “Messiah” on verses 5-6.

The only problem – if you read it within context of the whole book of Isaiah – is that it seems out of place.  And that’s because at this point in the book of Isaiah, it doesn’t seem like anybody needs restoration yet.

To really get the sense of this, you need to know that Isaiah is a prophet in Jerusalem who lives about 200 years before Jerusalem is conquered by the Babylonians and the people are sent into exile.  And the Babylonian exile and deportation is the most cataclysmic event for the people of Israel in the Old Testament after the bondage of slavery in Egypt.

But during the first 40 chapters of Isaiah, that event is still 200 years off.  Isaiah counsels the kings of Judah to remain faithful to God, and to trust that God will not abandon them no matter what. During these years, the Assyrians are also trying to conquer Jerusalem, but they never succeed in destroying it.  And although Isaiah DOES prophesy that worse days are coming, they don’t show up by chapter 35.

It’s not until chapter 40 that the context changes.  At this point, the people of Judah have already been conquered, and have been living in exile in Babylon for a long time.  And beginning with chapter 40, the prophet (sometimes he’s named Second Isaiah) announces that God is about to bring them home.  And chapter 40 begins with the voice crying, “in the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD”, which is quoted in the Gospels in relation to John the Baptist.  And it’s where Handel really gets material for the Messiah!

And that’s why most biblical scholars think that Chapter 35 is out of place. And they figure that whoever was assembling the Book of Isaiah as we now have it put this chapter where it is to remind readers of the coming promise of restoration just as things begin to get ominous.

But still, it seems out of place.  But actually, so does this vision of the highway.  Isaiah describes a highway in a place it doesn’t belong – in the wilderness. You don’t build a highway in the wilderness.  You build it along rivers and near coastlines where there’s water and where you won’t get lost without points of reference.  You build it where there are going to be some settlements of people from whom you could obtain help.  And you build it where the lions and other hungry creatures aren’t going to eat you.

And yet, the vision of Isaiah posits God’s way forward in a place it’s not supposed to be.  The way forward is not the long, circuitous route that the people might take, but rather a direct route through a desert.  And on this highway, nobody gets lost.  There’s abundant water.  The wild animals are kept at bay.  And even the people too weak or ill to make the journey still get there. 

We don’t actually know by what route the people of Judah eventually were able to return to Jerusalem after 70 years of exile.  They probably travelled by a number of different routes.  But this vision was remembered because the key thing that God did was to prepare a way forward – a way for them to go home – a way that wasn’t supposed to be there and seemed out of place.

And this is a key theme, both in the prophetic literature as well as in the Gospels.  God provides a way for people to move forward.  But sometimes, people don’t recognize the way – or they don’t even look for the way – because it isn’t in the place they expected, or it doesn’t look like what they expected.

This is, essentially, what’s happening in today’s Gospel reading.  In last Sunday’s reading, John the Baptist appeared in wilderness, and he described what he thought the road through the wilderness would look like.  It involved the axe lying at the root of the trees, a winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff and a burning with unquenchable fire!

And so when Jesus doesn’t do that stuff, John sends messengers from prison and asks, “are you the highway we’re supposed to be on, or should we look for another?”  And Jesus replies with, essentially, a road map that looks like Isaiah’s vision: “Go and tell John … the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers

are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” This is the highway that Jesus brings, but it clearly seemed out of place to John at that moment.

And so an important thing for us to remember as we read these texts is that sometimes God places a way forward for us that may initially seem out of place. It’s not what we were looking for.  It’s not where we were looking for it.  And it may not even seem to be the right time to be looking for it!

And so often, being open to God’s new way forward means looking for God’s way forward:

• Right now… During Advent, it’s easy to get caught up in remembering how God made a way forward for ancient people in the Bible (perhaps the ancient Israelites or the early Christians).  Or, we get caught up in the “end times” readings that may make us think about someday in the future when Jesus comes again.  But the point of these readings is to call us to look for how Jesus is coming into our lives right now, and calling us forward right now. I may not think I need a new highway, because I’m a Lutheran and can keep going down the same road I’ve always gone down!  But the vision of Isaiah reminds me to be open right now to the new and different paths God is putting before me, even and especially when I’m become comfortable in the ruts of the old road…

• In places we haven’t looked before, or even dismissed as impractical … the wilderness was not a place anybody in the ancient world would look for a highway.  But this highway Isaiah envisions has blessings and possibilities.  And part of our call as people of God is to look for the blessings and the possibilities God is putting before us, even and especially in places where finding those blessings and possibilities seems out of place.  And I can remember any number of times in my life – and you probably can, too – when I really, really didn’t want to have to live in a new way – or go down a different road – for very many good reasons.  But then, I found that at least some of those ways were actually good and helpful, and I learned things that helped me in my journey because I found the new possibilities God put before me in places I thought were too “out of place,” not unlike springs of water in a desert …

• When we’re not feeling like we’re in the wilderness … when I was in Boy Scouts, they taught us all kinds of things to do to find our way out if we got stuck in the wilderness (notably, this was before cell phones and GPS!); but in fact, the time to prepare for a way through the wilderness is before you get stuck in it.  And maybe this is why Isaiah 35 is “out of place.”  It reminds readers that before you’re stuck in whatever exile you may feel yourself in, prepare yourself with hope in God’s promises.  And one of the themes of Advent is to be involved in the kind of preparation that teaches us live forward with hope and expectation so that in the coming year if we find ourselves struggling in a wilderness, we know how to look for God’s ways forward…

Isaiah 35 is out of place.  But that’s part of the point.  God’s new way forward in our lives often seem out of place to us, too.

And so as we journey through Advent and beyond, watch for God’s new ways in places you might not have expected them to be.  As we journey through Advent and beyond, look for signs of God’s blessing and promise, even and especially if you feel like you’re in a wilderness moment.  And as we journey through Advent and beyond, remember that God is always doing new things and calling you forward to new life, even if some of those things and places seem out of place.

Amen.